Hands-On Review of Fat Bar Cable Attachments from Bells of Steel
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- Опубліковано 24 сер 2024
- First off, I have two corrections I have to address:
1) The V Bar attachment is clearly a V, not a T. I called it a T Bar because that’s what Bells of Steel calls theirs on their site and I just repeating it without using my brain. It’s a V, but it’s used for the T Bar row exercise. Apologies.
2) The difference between 47” and 52” is indeed 5 inches, not 4 inches. Math is hard.
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I wasn't sure what to think of these fat bar cable attachments from @BELLSOFSTEEL because I owned "Fat Gripz" in the past and never used them, but I was pleasantly surprised by these. I've had them for a couple weeks now and I've used the lat pulldown bar and curl bar numerous times. Really really love them.
Timestamps and links to each item are below if you want to check 'em out!
3:53- Lat Pulldown Bar
4:55- Single D Handle
5:41- Straight Bar
6:43- V Bar
8:14- EZ Curl Bar
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Lat Pulldown Bar: bellsofsteel.u...
Curl Bar: bellsofsteel.u...
Single D Handle: bellsofsteel.u...
V Bar: bellsofsteel.u...
Straight Bar: bellsofsteel.u...
Tricep Pushdown Bar: bellsofsteel.u...
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And if you're in the market for a cable tower, I have a couple other videos to help...
Weight Stack vs Plate Loaded Tower: • Weight Stack Pulley To...
Lat Pulldown Cable Hack: • Low Ceiling Lat Pulldo...
Glad to see you with those fat bars! We hope they serve you long and well 😎😎
Bro, you are freaking jacked , such an inspiration for me in the home gym comunity
Really appreciate it!! Keep going 💪 I've been in this game a longggg time.
the single handle could be used to mimic a suitcase hold ( one handed farmers ) but not being able to walk
I think these look super cool, but I don't fully understand the purpose of fat grip items like this.
By making the limiting factor your grip you won't be able to take the target muscle of the movement (like the back in pulldowns) close enough to failure to actually induce growth or strength adaptations for most people outside of beginners, but you're still generating fatigue and wasting energy which will hinder you when you actually want to train those other muscles.
On top of that, if you want to train your forearm/grip muscles for hypertrophy or strength, you're better off doing exercises with a concentric and eccentric component (i.e. movement for the forearm muscles/joints) rather than just isometric holds since I believe training muscles through motion has been shown in studies to result in better gains compared to isometrics.
So, if forearm size or strength is a goal, most people should just do dedicated exercises like wrist curls, reverse wrist curls, gripper squeezes (like Captains of Crush), etc...
If you want to train your grip for isometric endurance, just do farmer walks/carries, dead hangs, etc... you could use a fat grip implement here if you really want, but you could also just use heavier weights or more time and your grip will still give out and you end up with the essentially the same stimulus.
Main idea is to keep grip training relegated to dedicated grip exercises and not artificially limit yourself by your grip and waste more energy doing movements for other muscle groups that don't actually stimulate much adaptation in those muscles since the grip is what gives out.
Also, even with a normal thickness bar, your grip will likely become a limiting factor on many heavy movements for the most people outside the beginner stage.
This is a big reason people use straps, chalk, or other grip assistance, it allows you to keep training the target muscles/movements even when your grip can't keep up (which will almost always happen, your forearms are just relatively smaller/weaker muscles).
I'm not an expert and I'm not trying to be negative or hate on anything, I'm sure there's some setup or routine where these completely make sense, but using fat grip implements like these to do non-grip/forearm specific exercises that results in excess fatigue with minimal to no stimulus to other muscles just seems like a less effective way to train for the majority of people.
Just my 2 cents. Still loved the video and glad to see coverage of some new and different stuff like this, keep it up!
Always appreciate a good discussion and I don't disagree with you at all. I'm 15 years into my training and this is literally the first time I have ever done fat grip training with any kind of regularity- it's certainly not necessary at all. In fact, I've rarely trained my forearms at all and find they've gained pretty good size just through other exercises like curls, rows, deadlifts, etc.
With my training, I like to be as efficient as possible. I like to be in and out in an hour, so 2-in-1 exercises are extremely beneficial to me. If I'm going to perform lat pulldowns anyway, I don't see any downside to using the fat bar and simultaneously working on my grip strength in the process. It's definitely dependent on how you train- I like to train in a pretty traditional bodybuilding style where I aim for a specific rep range and I'm not necessarily training to failure on every set. Because of that, I've found that I am pulling very similar weight with the fat bar vs the standard bar.
Some people might see that I think I'm not training hard enough then, and that's fine. But that's the way I structure my workouts and the way I am comfortable training. For that use-case, the fat bar makes a ton of sense to me.
Of course, I'm not using a fat bar every single workout. It's a change-of-pace thing for me; improving grip strength is certainly not the focus of my training.
I absolutely agree that you can (and should) work on more grip-specific exercises to truly improve your overall grip strength. Farmer carries are the best option out there IMO, and I do a lot of eccentric training for that reason as well (especially on deadlifts).
It's similar to racks that have a skinny pullup bar and a fat pullup bar. You can perform standard or weighted pullups with the skinny bar, or you can do that same exercise with the fatter bar to work on your grip strength even more. Your output will be lowered, but as a way to change up your training, I love it.
TL;DR- I totally agree with you that there are better ways to train both your forearms and your grip strength, but I appreciate the application of being able to add the benefit of improving your grip strength without changing your programming.
@@MattRosenman I get the idea of trying to save time with a 2-in-1 exercise, but from my understanding of the latest scientific literature, for hypertrophy/bodybuilding training after the beginner phase, you want to be doing sets of anywhere between 5-30ish reps at 3 to 0 reps in reserve (RIR) for the target muscle. So, when doing a 2-in-1 exercise it's hard to get both target muscles within that range to properly stimulate any growth or adaptation in both muscles and ultimately the set is typically only stimulative for one.
What I mean is, if you compare the number of reps you can get with or without the fat grips using the same weight for a movement like a lat pulldown, if you are getting a meaningful decrease in reps when using the fat bar then that means you're likely taking your back outside of that 3 to 0 RIR range and the training is no longer very stimulative for your back as it's being limited by your grip.
For example, if 150lbs is your 15 rep max weight on the pulldown (i.e. the weight you can do for at most 15 reps when totally fresh), then that means you should be shooting to do around 12 reps (3 RIR) to 15 reps (0 RIR) on a first set for your back muscles to get a stimulative set that should trigger meaningful growth/adaptation.
If you use a fat grip bar and now for the same 150lbs your grip fails at 10 reps, that means your back muscles are actually at 5 RIR and your grip was the only thing that got a meaningful stimulus by reaching failure and you just expended extra energy doing all this motion for the back muscles that won't result in much meaningful growth or adaptation.
You may still feel some burn and tension in the back, but it's not actually pushing the muscles close enough to their limits to stimulate adaptation (once you're more intermediate or advanced), it's just fatiguing them without growing them if that makes sense.
Conversely, if you are still able to get the same number of reps for the same weight with the fat bar, then your grip isn't limiting you and thus your forearm/grip muscles are likely not being pushed close enough to that 3 to 0 RIR range to stimulate adaptation in them (at least not long-term, if you have never really trained them before you may still see some adaptation initially but it will likely plateau relatively quickly).
Thus, unless you happen to have a weight and rep range that perfectly aligns where both your grip and your back reach 3 to 0 RIR during the set, you're actually still only stimulating 1 of them to grow and it's not really a 2-in-1 exercise, it's just using more energy to stimulate 1 muscle and reducing your output in other exercises by tiring you out and reducing the overall quality of the session.
If you really want to be more time efficient while getting a robust stimulus to both your back and forearm muscles, a better idea may be to superset the normal bar pulldowns with a grip exercise like a wrist curl or gripper squeeze where you just do the grip training during your normal rest breaks. Just make sure to use straps or something to assist your grip on the pulldowns since your forearms will be tired out by the grip training and you don't want it to limit your ability to push your back close to failure in the pulldowns.
With that you shouldn't be spending much extra time (if any), but both muscles still can be stimulated to get them within that hypertrophy range in every set and it should result in more robust growth than trying to hit both in a 2-in-1 exercise. Although personally, I'd probably just move grip training to another day/time and superset it there where it won't even interfere much at all (like a leg day or something).
Obviously, everyone is individual and if you feel like you're noticing improvements in both your back and grip strength/size and you find this allows you to be consistent and train in a way you enjoy that's the most important thing! Also, I could be totally wrong about this, just relaying what I've seen from my research into exercise science and hypertrophy training especially, and the 2-in-1 exercise concept doesn't seem to really work well when applying those principles.
Sorry for the long posts but I love this discussion! Really appreciate your detailed response and explanation of things 😊, you're honestly jacked so whatever you're doing is clearly working for you so keep it up 💪.
I use fat gripz all the time, I love them, and my saxon gripz from abmat are amazing as well.
Saxon gripz look like they would drive me up a wall. I'm sure they'd work well but man, I can see myself really struggling with those haha
I have the fat ez curl attachment. Picked it up at home gym con.
What do you think of it?
Would this fatigue your grip at the expense of large muscle groups such as the lats for pull-downs, rows, etc?
If used exclusively, yes. Its main purpose is grip strength, so your overall strength output will be lower with these. I've been using these for lat pulldowns and still feel it in my lats plenty, but using ONLY these bars would definitely not be the most efficient thing to do for overall muscle growth
I like BoS stuff. I want to get the cable tower next. I have the hydra rack four post.
I love the setup of having the cable tower attached to the rack. I have a Titan rack but with the same overall footprint as the Hydra (minus a couple inches in height) and the cable towers add a ton of stability to the rack
@@MattRosenman I have a 72 in rack not sure if it would be ideal for the tower
You'd likely have to get creative with how you attach it, so probably not ideal unfortunately.
have you seen the prx halo lever arms?
Curious minds want to know?🤔 ?What are your workouts like? 😊
Curious if you've tried that lat pulldown bar inverted with the handles pointed up. I've seen comments from others saying that angle places a nice but different focus on the lats. Matt Wenning over at Wenning Strength has a fat pulldown bar with the handles inverted and calls it the reverse V lat pulldown. He discusses the benefits here: ua-cam.com/video/fMpwHz02Jzc/v-deo.html
Oh that's interesting, I hadn't even heard of that before. I'd love to give it a try. Any time you can switch things up, especially if you've been training 15+ years like I have, I think it's always worth it to try.
@@MattRosenman yeah, your video made me think of Wenning's and his bar. My cable machine doesn't arrive for a few more months but I'm interested in this approach. Curious to get your take on it if you try it.
@kyles8391 I seen Dr mike isrealel talk about that bar and wenning also . I m looking for one of those bars . I'm thinking you could do that grip with that ez curl bar
@@bootsandbraces75 I ended up getting one from EliteFTS, called the "Fat Bar Reverse Lat Pulldown 48". My browser found me a 10% discount code (SHEPPARD10) which knocked it down to $81 + shipping/tax. Can't use it until my cable system arrives but looking forward to it.
Would you say the curl bar can replace both a plate loaded and cable attachment curl bar? Or do you consider the regular cable attachment a necessity.
I think so, yes. If you already have a regular curl bar attachment, then I'd hold onto it because it's not taking up much space and there's plenty of use for it. But if you're in the market for a curl bar and only want to get one, I'd be thrilled to only have the fat bar. Generally speaking, you don't want to ONLY use fat bars because your overall strength output is going to be lower when you use those. So you wouldn't want to exclusively use a fat bar for lat pulldowns for example because your lat training may take a slight hit if you're trying to build a big back. But for something like bicep or tricep exercises where maxing out the weight is not my objective, I love using this.
Basically, it's all subjective and dependent on how much you think you'd prefer to use a regular curl bar. I'm going to be using the fat bar more often than the regular curl bar going forward for bicep curls specifically since forearm training goes hand in hand with biceps.
I would love that EZ curl bar, but mannnn do those welds look terrible. I'm gonna hope that iron that out.
Haha yeah, it looks real rough. I don't care too much about that kind of stuff but I know that's gonna be a big turn off for a lot of people
@@MattRosenman I've got a small space, 9x19, and I'm starting from nothing so I'm being REALLY particular about what I buy. I imagine I'm not the only one, so I hope bells figures it out lol. I've got their dual cable stacks primarily because of your videos actually.
Haha, yeah I think it depends on the product. It seems like a lot of companies now are willing to put out a product to test the market and then they improve it with a V2. If this bar gets good reception I'd be willing to bet you'd see a future version looking much cleaner